If you are meeting friends at the southern entrance of Capitol Hill Station near Cal Anderson, you’ll now want to tell your phone to head to E Barbara Bailey Way. The new street name to honor the longtime Broadway business owner is now official after a Tuesday afternoon ceremony attended by Mayor Jenny Durkan and city officials.

Calling Bailey and “LGBTQ+ activist civil rights champion,” Durkan announced the plan to honor the founder of the long gone but not forgotten Bailey/Coy book shop earlier this summer. Bailey passed way last September at the age of 74.

The new street name replaces a stretch of E Denny Way that was updated as a “festival street” appropriate for closure for festivals and events near the light rail station.  The festival street was designed as both a one-way traffic route above the center of the underground Capitol Hill Station facility and through the development, plaza, and the AIDS Memorial Pathway that will open at the site in 2020.

Representatives from the pathway effort that will honor those lost and surviving with HIV/AIDS were also part of Tuesday’s ceremony.

Unlike the honorary street designations like the one to honor Mount Zion’s Rev. Dr. Samuel B. McKinney with his own Rev. Dr. S. McKinney Ave along part of 19th Ave in 2014, the E Barbara Bailey Way designation is a full and complete change in the street’s name with the city swapping out street signs and updating data provided to mapping services and more.

A look at the updates on some services shows there might be a kink or two to work out. E Barbara Bailey Way is supposed to run between Broadway and 10th Ave E — not fully replace E Denny Way.

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